The space upon your pillow holds your head It sleeps in wrinkled rivers in your bed These rivers flowing through the empty space Meander down their valleys to a sea— So down a whirlpool the sheets unlace And fall as rain upon a willow tree

The willow's roots search through the dampened ground And deep below tell no one what they've found And in the willow's store of worms and bone And lost among the bottles, coins, and all A tendril of a root has found some stone And through a crack within, it finds a hall

For in this hall of stone there lies a sword That holds the secrets of the souls it gored The silver of the blade shines through the blood And lights the passage with its ancient gleam— And water drips through cracks and turns to mud When dust upon the floor meets with the stream.

The muddy stream flows down the marbled floor Far down the cavern till it finds a door And crawls into a room that once was known By all the world that listened to a king (Whose skeleton still sits upon a throne And on his whitened hand is worn a ring)

The ring is made of gold and ivory
And shows a picture of the willow tree The dwarves that made the ring are ever gone And never told the king that magic lay Inside the scene that one might gaze upon As this king gazes, since his dying day

For futures lie within this magic ring (And as you see, so sees the buried king) And looking on the king there is a cat Who somehow found his way into this tomb His yellow slowly blinking eyes stare at The king who sits amid majestic gloom

A cat may look upon a king ye know
And as the saying keeps, he deems it so The cat is dark as blackened candle wicks His eyes are blazing like the candles' flame Ignoring death, he casually licks,
And though no soul has told, you know his name

For every now and then this cat gets bored And travels down the hallway past the sword And through a rusted gate, and grassy fields, Beyond the willow, over many hills

And so within your house your dreaming yields:— An empty space beneath your window fills